Members of the high society were often dining on pork, game and poultry. The poorer class frequently ate meals with beef and dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms which were introduced in the thirteenth century from Russia. A scholar Józef Jeżowski wrote about the local love for meat in his Zabawy Ziemiańskie (Gentry Delights):

Upper cut from a fat ox can be good,
Also, a roast goose and capon in broth,
And a fresh piece of meat, or veal,
Brawn with tasty horseradish, lamb with dill,
Fatty roast pig, pork fat in vegetables,
The peas; no second thoughts ever on the game,
The fish is always apt, when there is a pond on the grounds,
He has for his needs and can give it to someone.

Besides meat, an important part of the former diet were gifts of the earth - grown in the gardens fruits and vegetables (especially beans and cabbage) and agricultural products, used mainly for baking bread. Based on sourdough from wholemeal flour a popular traditional Polish soup called żurek was prepared.

Libations were a separate issue. Most noble feasts could not exist without the proper amount of alcohol - light upper fermentation beer, spirits, and (in the case of a particularly wealthy) wines. Until the sixteenth century beer was the true national drink though, and since then this alcohol has not lost its popularity. This relationship is clearly evident in the story of an eighteenth-century chronicler Jędrzeja Kitowicz, presenting a typical Polish feast:

It was the host's responsibility that he should continuously supply food and beverage. Nobility was offered wine mixed with spirit for swifter dizziness, and beer to quench the thirst. Drinking then one after another, first this mixture of wine with spirit, and beer afterwards, meant getting quickly and cheaply drunk. Having become drunk, they fell where they stood, and where they fell they slept: at the table, under the table, under the fence, in the middle of the street, in the gutter, in the mud, where their stumbling legs led to and finally collapsed.

Another popular alcohol delicacy was honey wine, or mead. For ascetic non-drinkers water or milk remained.

The sixteenth century was a period of penetration of foreign influences into the Polish cuisine. We owe them above all to the Italian princess Bona Sforza - the mother of the Polish king Zygmunt August. Thanks to her, Italian vegetables such as celery, parsley, carrots and leeks made it to Polish tables. Lettuce was less popular, considered to be an ordinary, tasteless green vegetable. For a time a popular story went around about a Polish nobleman who being fed grass in Italy, decided to return to his homeland early, fearing that in winter he will have to eat hay.

In the seventeenth century potatoes were welcomed on Polish tables, which turned out to be a true taste sensation, effectively displacing grits. This was a time when Poles also began drinking tea and coffee (mainly Turkish). The first Polish cookbook comes from 1682 - Compendium Ferculorum or a collection of dishes by Stanisław Czerniecki. In this publication we can find the first mention of bigos – a stew of boiled cabbage and minced meat, of which essential element was sausage, which is another Polish delicacy. Sausage began to be added to żurek.

In 1786 another culinary compendium was published – The perfect cook by a nobleman Wojciech Wielądko. The bestseller turned out to be published in the nineteenth century Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa's cookbook, sometimes called the first Polish housekeeper during time of partitions. Ćwierczakiewiczowa's dishes proved timeless and still survive on Polish tables. Just to mention such classic delicacies as tomato soup (to the nineteenth century. tomatoes were almost unknown in Poland) or schabowy, a breaded pork chop.

The twentieth century did not greatly affect the development of Polish cuisine. The communist era dishes were quite on a shoestring (due to prevailing poverty and food shortages), and the peak of the culinary thought was paprykarz, a paste of rice, tomatoes and fish developed in the laboratories of Szczecin.

Today's Polish gastronomy is strongly globalised, having to compete with a range of cuisines from other parts of the world. Despite this, restaurants with traditional Polish food still are popular, and bigos, and schabowy are all part of the family Sunday dinners.

Popular Polish dishes:

Żurek

Ingredients: a bunch of włoszczyzna (carrots, parsnips, celeriac, leeks, cabbage), smoked sausage, smoked bacon, a bottle of sourdough for żurek, hard boiled egg

Additionally: dried mushrooms, cloves of garlic, sour cream, laurel leaves, allspice, marjoram, salt, pepper

Instructions:

1. Peel all the vegetables, rinse off and dice. Place in a pot and add 1.2 litres of water. Next, add the previously washed and soaked dried mushrooms (with a glass of water used for soaking), sausage, bacon as well as salt and spices to taste. Stew covered on low heat for 45 minutes. Pour the broth through a fine sieve.
2. Shake up the sourdough in the bottle until well mixed and pour it all into the broth. Boil żurek, constantly stirring. Slice the sausage and mushrooms and dice the bacon and then put back in the soup. Add marjoram to taste ground with salt, garlic and sour cream.
3. Peel hard-boiled eggs and slice. Pour żurek into bowls and place egg slices on top.

Bigos

Ingredients: sauerkraut, veal, boneless pork, smoked bacon, sausage, flour, dry red wine, tomato concentrate

Additionally: dried mushrooms, butter or oil, salt, pepper, sugar, marjoram, garlic.

Instructions:

1. Drain the sauerkraut and chop up.
2. Add soaked and sliced mushrooms.
3. Cover with hot water, add salt and boil covered.
4. When the sauerkraut starts boiling, lift the lid. Boil uncovered for a few minutes. Afterwards, cover again and boil for an additional 45 minutes on low heat.
5. Wash and cube the meat.
6. Chop bacon and dice the onions.
7. Brown bacon and add the meat. Fry together for a few minutes, then add the onions.
8. Stir fry for a while, then add a bit of water afterwards and sautee covered for a few minutes.
9. Chop the sausage into little pieces and fry.
10. Heat up butter or oil and mix with flour. Make roux.
11. Add sauerkraut, sausage, tomato concentrate, spices and wine to the roux.
12. Stew everything together covered for a few more minutes.